It should be that habit of treating the workforce as if they were part of a tomato-exporting estate to the United Kingdom, in the heyday of the Millers. The Canary maritime decision-makers sector took to the scene this Tuesday looking for a laugh. Canarymaritime’s latest scoop reveals that, when it comes to publishing public documents, the two provinces are playing completely different games.
While in Ports of Tenerife executives spell out their corporate actions almost down to the price of a coffee, in the Port Authority of Las Palmas it appears the “update page” button has been broken. This registral blackout from the Gran Canaria leadership has sparked a genuine uproar among dockside chatterers, where more than one wonders whether time passes more slowly at the Port of La Luz or whether the institutional Wi-Fi is running on low power. In Tenerife, director Nieto Sanz is also not falling behind: 54,600 euros under the mysterious heading of “other rights.”
Francisco Trujillo’s time capsule
The real fun starts when we look at the papers of the Port Authority of Las Palmas, where transparency seems to have taken a leave of absence for depression. The official data for its director, Francisco Trujillo Ramírez, are trapped in a time capsule from 2021. Trujillo signed his latest declaration when he took office under the PSOE mandate, although the older hands there remember, with an ironic smile, that this senior post originally arrived on the dockside carpet thanks to the People’s Party, in the era of Javier Sánchez-Simón. A true chameleon of public management who has spent a full five years in a documentary limbo, with 165,681.74 euros in real estate, a debt of 129,974 euros, 32,307.95 euros in current accounts, a modest life insurance policy of 2,400 euros, and another 20,000 euros in “additional assets.”
Disconnects from reality at the La Luz docks
“Anyone who sees the car he comes to work in knows that this declaration blows up just as Luis Ibarra’s does—he’s rich before the political machinations—and that this data is disconnected from reality,” says a dock official in Las Palmas, adding between laughs: “Everything is very legal.”
The mockery among logistics operators was total. People joked about whether the delay in Gran Canaria is because the Las Palmas computer system runs on 3.5-inch diskettes, or whether it’s a deliberate strategy so that nobody pokes around in the wallet of those who have been “handling so many things for so long.” While Tenerife reports back to the last cent, the Port of Las Palmas remains installed in its own “remember” from 2021, showing that public ethics and transparency, at times, depend on how much you like the current year.
Tenerife’s neat financial ‘striptease’
The contrast borders on a comedic gag across the water. In the neighboring province, the port director of Tenerife, Pablo Zósimo Nieto Sanz, has put on a proper financial ‘striptease’ with updated 2023 figures. The man keeps his eggs in different baskets—and well organized: 204,064.66 euros in brick-and-mortar property, another 118,056.39 euros in the corporate shares and participations league, 47,747.45 euros in the bank for contingencies, and 54,600 euros under the mysterious heading of “other rights.” That said, he also doesn’t escape debts, declaring liabilities of 139,705.71 euros. Such a tidy breakdown that even the tax office would send him a Christmas congratulatory note.
From Tenerife’s capitalism to boasting an investor profile
Tenerife’s transparency fever doesn’t stop there. Manuel Fernando Martínez Álvarez, head of the Consortium of the Santa Cruz Free Zone, has also done his homework with the ease of someone who has nothing to hide: 137,745.73 euros in company shareholdings and about 67,461.53 euros in real estate. In the berths, dockside talk—full of laughter—says that Tenerife managers love to show off an investor profile and submit to scrutiny, making it clear that their thing is moving money with light, ledgers and business pride.
The danger of mocking the rules
What happens at the docks as an outright “port chaos”—and a round of jokes about old diskettes and low-power Wi-Fi—is actually a worrying sign of institutional quality being devalued at the Port of Las Palmas. That the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife complies in a thorough, detailed and up-to-date way with public transparency records should not be a heroic exception, but the boring norm of the administration.
The entry Cachondeo portuario en Las Palmas con la declaración patrimonial del director congelada desde 2021 was first published on canarymaritime.com.
